America in the War: Each cartoon faced with a page of comment by a distinguished American, the text forming an anthology of patriotic opinionRaemaekers, Louis
History
America in the War: Each cartoon faced with a page of comment by a distinguished American, the text forming an anthology of patriotic opinion
Raemaekers, Louis
World War, 1914-1918 -- Humor, caricatures, etc.
Count Hertling asks resentfully: “Who dares to suggest that I am not
on the side of justice?” Count Hertling is undoubtedly sincere. Until
this war began the world had almost forgotten the record for duplicity
and inhumanity of the military tyrants of Prussia,--the treachery and
barbarity of the race of which he and they are the offspring. They are
running true to type, but for the time we had forgotten what the type
was; yet it was known well enough to Julius Cæsar and to the others
who ruled the Roman world. For him the Germans were “that treacherous
race which is bred up from the cradle to war and rapine,” who “practise
the base deception which first asks for peace and then openly begins
war,” who are “outside the pale of negotiations”--yet Cæsar had not
heard of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk! History is repeating itself
after two thousand years, yet two thousand years ago it was then only
repeating itself. The Prussian has always been the same. His instincts
are today as they were when he roamed the swamp lands, naked and with
a stone club in his fist, pig-eyed and bull-necked, like the mastodon
of his native forests. Raemaekers has done well to symbolize him in his
treatment of helpless Russia, as a hairy prehistoric beast crushing
out the life of a bleeding nation beneath his ponderous feet. Count
Hertling says he is on the side of justice. He is--of German justice,
the justice of which the butchered civilians and outraged girls of
Belgium, the crucified Canadians, the murdered Edith Cavell, and the
martyred babies and their mothers of the _Lusitania_, are examples. It
is the justice of the mammoth and the cave-man, the sabre-toothed tiger
and the woolly rhinoceros,--all of whom would agree that Count Hertling
in his dealings with Russia was actuated by the only recognized
Prussian ideal--the right of the strongest brute to ravish and destroy.
ARTHUR TRAIN.
[Illustration]
_The Better Fighter_
CANADA’S PART IN THE WAR
“Bound by no constitution, bound by no law, equity or obligation,
Canada has decided as a nation to make war. We have levied an army;
we have sent the greatest army to England that has ever crossed the
Atlantic, to take part in the battles of England. We have placed
ourselves in opposition to great world powers. We are now training and
equipping an army greater than the combined forces of Wellington and
Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo.”
_Speech of Sir Clifford Sifton at Montreal._
[Illustration]
_The Dungeon of Autocracy_
There is a part of Germany that longs for freedom; but that is not the
Prussian part. The soul of Germany is not entirely killed by her mortal
sins of money and land-lust; and Raemaekers here paints the remorseful
soul, crowned with the blurred cross. Germany turns her back to the
sky; she prefers to look at the dark ground of her dungeon rather than
to face that light. She is chained by her own will, and yet her inmost
soul revolts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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